


find your kindness

by chanterai



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Aerith is perhaps the sweetest person on the planet, Anxiety, F/F, Gold Saucer Date, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Tifa feels weird about this, liberties taken with how exactly materia works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanterai/pseuds/chanterai
Summary: A study in materia-drunkeness, quiet moments in the midst of Saving The World, and finding comfort in unexpected people.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart
Comments: 12
Kudos: 242
Collections: FF7 Secret Santa 2019





	find your kindness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/gifts).



> happy christmas j i adore you <33 i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoy your entire existence (which is SO DANG MUCH)!! i'm so blessed to have gotten you for this exchange!!
> 
> thanks [s](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thatswrathbaby) for the quick once-over!!

The Costa Del Sol inn room is comfortable, if a bit... kitsch.

Tifa’s is essentially exactly what she’d expected; the noisy grit of sand tracked in under her feet, worn wooden flooring. The salt-smell of the ocean and decor — a mosaic of seashells shaped into a larger, uglier seashell, plus a painting of the ocean that mirrors the exact view out the window — that might have been in style a few years ago but now looks tacky and out-dated.

It could be much worse. At least here there’s no acrid mako-stink. Just the clean ocean air and the sound of the tide drifting out-and-out, the promise of privacy and some sense of peace in solitude for the night.

“Tifa?”

Or maybe not so much solitude.

Tifa’s not expecting company. She’s not expecting much of anything tonight, not much but a fitful sleep in the first single-room inn they’ve stayed in since they left the eastern continent. She’s certainly not expecting Aerith, peering in through the cracked door, green eyes sparkling.

“Hey,” she says, unsure, and Aerith pushes the door open a little further.

“Do you mind if I come in?” she asks, already halfway into the room.

Tifa quirks an ironic sort-of-smile at her. “Sure.”

Aerith smiles back guilelessly. She’s not in the same clothes she’s been wearing for the last days days of travel, not the same pink thing she’s been in since they left Midgar. She still looks casual, still in pink, but the dress she’s wearing looks clean and soft and new. Tifa wonders, ridiculously, if she’d somehow had time to pack or if she’s been shopping on the boardwalk already.

Tucking her hands behind her back, Aerith asks, “I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk. On the beach?”

Tifa doesn’t move from where she’s perched on the bed.

She doesn’t dislike Aerith. No, she likes her well enough, just… she’s not sure what she _wants._ They’re not friends, not exactly, and the only reason they’ve been speaking much at all is because of Cloud. Because of this frankly tragic series of events that has brought them all together against their individual wills.

She feels a bit like Barrett, now. Wrung taut with wariness, with distrust, with reluctance to speak to this woman she barely knows at all.

“I don’t think I’m up for a walk tonight,” she says carefully, and it’s not a lie. She’s battered from their journey here, hasn’t had the chance yet to bathe and patch herself up even though she should have picked up a potion hours ago to heal what she’s fairly certain is a set of bruised or cracked ribs, a sprained ankle. She’s been pushing herself too hard. She knows this.

Aerith’s green, green eyes flicker as she tilts her head and the way they catch the light from the window makes Tifa think wildly of Cloud, of SOLDIER.

Aerith asks, “Will you let me look?” and closes the door behind her as she walks in without waiting for an answer.

Tifa turns her face away. Her cheeks are burning, unexpectedly, inexplicably.

“It’s nothing,” she insists. “Just - I rolled my ankle.” She folds her hands together in her lap even though she wants to fiddle with her gloves — an anxious reaction she’s picked up for when she doesn’t know what else to do with herself. She has a nagging feeling that Aerith would notice, or, more terrifyingly, has already noticed.

“Nothing a quick spell won’t fix,” Aerith agrees, and then she’s settling gracefully on the floor in front of Tifa like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

The leather of Tifa’s glove creaks when she makes a fist, and again when she forces it to uncurl. Aerith either hasn’t noticed or is ignoring it entirely because her warm palm presses firmly to Tifa’s calf with no hesitation.

“Haven’t bathed yet,” Tifa protests weakly. “My boots stink.”

Aerith laughs. This sweet giggle that makes Tifa think, ridiculously, of bells chiming.

“Not a problem,” Aerith says, and out of the corner of Tifa’s eye she can see the materia slotted into the bangle around her wrist glowing faintly.

She lets out a slow breath. Out of all of them, and to no one’s surprise, Aerith is incredibly adept at healing spells. The way Barrett casts them is clumsy at best, and Cloud isn’t much better. Tifa manages alright but there’s still something cool and clinical about the way the cure materia works under her command.

When Aerith casts a cure spell it’s _warm,_ like sinking into a hot bath. Tifa can still feel the vague discomfort of ligaments reknitting themselves around her foot and ankle but it’s softer than it would be with anyone else. The healing is localized but the feeling floods the rest of Tifa’s body, seeps into her like she’s just downed a half-bottle of whiskey.

By the time she’s fully exhaled, Aerith is pulling away, glancing up at her with that easy smile.

“Anywhere else?”

Tifa blinks numbly at her, and it takes her a slow and stupid moment to remember her ribs.

“Here,” she says reluctantly, leaning back on her hands to show off the smudges of bruising across her middle. The movement stretches aching muscles, strains the injured ribs themselves — stupid of her, maybe, but she grits her teeth and shuts her eyes against it.

“Oh,” Aerith murmurs. “That doesn’t look fun.”

Tifa huffs out a laugh and that hurts too, but she keeps her eyes closed. “I’ve had worse,” she says, because she absolutely has.

Aerith laughs with her. It’s more subdued now, and Tifa can feel the warmth of her body as she leans in and presses gentle palms to her ribcage.

It feels… alarmingly good. The spell and the touch both, the feeling of being so close to someone and not reflexively wanting to lash out.

She doesn’t notice herself humming, sighing, until the warmth of the spell fades.

The warmth of Aerith’s hands stays. Tifa forces her eyes open.

Aerith is watching her, eyes still sparkling in the light. Tifa thinks, spell-drunk, about what it might be like to kiss her. About what it might be like to pull her up into her arms and roll into bed together.

Her eyes are so green and her lips look so, so soft.

And then Aerith smiles at her, lets her hands ghost down to squeeze Tifa’s hips gently before she stands and straightens.

“You should get some rest,” she says softly.

 _You should get some rest_ with _me,_ Tifa doesn’t say.

“Yes,” she says instead. “I think I will.”

For a second she thinks that’s it. That Aerith is going to turn on her heel and head out of the room and they’re never going to speak of this moment — is it a moment? Is Tifa misreading the touch, the look? — but then Aerith is leaning in with those impossibly soft, impossibly pink lips pursed just a little.

Her lips press to Tifa’s forehead.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she hums, brushing a strand of hair out of Tifa’s face and behind her ear. “Sweet dreams.”

And _then_ she’s gone, in a rustle of pink fabric and graceful footsteps and the quiet snap of the door behind her.

Tifa exhales, long and shuddering, and reaches up to touch her own face where Aerith had kissed her.

“Sweet dreams,” she whispers, to no one.

—

Corel is a disaster, but most of this journey has been a series of disasters anyway.

They’re all dirty and exhausted by the time they make it out, by the time Cloud wins a chocobo race for their freedom. It’s so _stupid,_ Tifa thinks, such a ridiculous chain of events that has lead them here and now they’re all just resting on their laurels in the Gold Saucer like they have time to relax. Like they shouldn’t be anywhere but here, continuing to fight, to travel, to _go._

She feels antsy and tense, even as she’s so incredibly exhausted that she could pass out on her feet.

She doesn’t care much for the inn that they’re essentially forced to stay at. A “haunted” hotel isn’t exactly her idea of a good or relaxing time. Aerith seems to like it, in her way, and Yuffie is predictably delighted with it. Cloud and Barrett don’t seem to care either way, which is also predictable.

As much as she wants to move on, though, Tifa will take the breaks as she can get them.

She takes a bath because she swears she’s more dirt than person at this point. It takes what feels like a long time of careful scrubbing and nearly an entire bar of soap to feel somewhat clean again, and by then her bathwater has gone so murky with mud that she drains it and runs a second one for good measure. It helps a little. To leech some of the weary ache from her muscles and joints, to soothe the perpetual tension of _adventuring,_ which is how only Yuffie refers to what feels entirely too much like a suicide mission to be an _adventure,_ to Tifa at least.

It’s a relief to clamber out of the bath and see her own skin for once instead of mud gone grey as it’s dried. It’s a relief to comb out her damp, perfumed hair and to smell like a human being instead of an old dumpster.

Once she’s dried, she feels rejuvenated enough to attempt a couple of cure spells on herself. Her injuries aren’t nearly as bad as the ones she’d had in Costa Del Sol, against all odds. Scrapes mostly, some bruising around her ribs instead of cracks. Things she’s fully capable of healing on her own.

In spite of herself, she sort of wishes it was Aerith healing her. Regardless of whether or not she’s capable of doing it herself.

She forces the thought down and away and shudders at the cool spread of her cure materia. It feels a little like an ice pack, too cold but a productive cold that dulls the ache of bruises and seals the broken skin on her knuckles and knees.

It hasn’t even occurred to her that there might be other people waiting for the bathroom until Yuffie starts rapping on the door and whining that she stinks like a swamp beast. She hurriedly redresses herself in blissfully clean clothes and apologizes to Yuffie as she breezes past her out the door and back down the hall to the rooms.

Aerith is there, perched on one of the three beds, and Tifa gives her a tired nod before she flops on her own bed. It’s not the most comfortable bed she’s ever lain on but she’s never been quite so thankful for a mattress and blankets instead of hard ground and sleeping bags.

She lets out a long, pleased groan, and Aerith laughs.

“Good to be inside,” she murmurs, and Tifa hums her agreement.

“I’m going to sleep for seventy years,” she mumbles, burrowing her face into the pillow. It smells sort of weird, like industrial laundry detergent, but even that can’t bother her right now.

And she means to say something else, maybe. Means to thank Aerith for all of the healing she’s had to do for them since Costa Del Sol because she hadn’t thanked her then and she feels guilty for it now. She means to offer up a potion or a cure spell of her own to help out, because she knows that even as Aerith is their best healer, it always seems to work better coming from someone else.

But her bed is singing its siren song, and sleep is calling out like an old lover, and when her eyes close they don’t open again for the rest of the afternoon.

—

It’s pitch black in the hotel room when Tifa wakes with a start.

She’s gotten used to waking up quick — it’s been a necessity on the road, forcing her mind into wakefulness to fight off some monster that crept up on them in the night. She’s always been sort of a light sleeper and this has been to her advantage over the last few weeks.

Still, it’s decidedly disorienting to have gone to sleep with the sun still up and to wake up in the dark of night with no discernible reason.

She heaves herself up to sit and knuckle at her eyes, reorients herself with a few slow breaths that slow her heart rate back down just a bit. The lump in the bed next to her is Yuffie, she registers, snoring softly and bundled up in so many blankets that she’s barely visible apart from the shallow rise and fall of her breathing. The next bed, the one furthest from the door, is empty.

Even as she’s considering laying back down to rest a while longer, Tifa blinks the remnants of sleep from her eyes and untwists herself from her blankets to climb out of bed. She’s too awake now, she thinks, too curious or concerned as to where Aerith has gone to get back to sleep in any reasonable amount of time.

She dresses herself quickly, carries her muddy boots outside of the room quietly so that she doesn’t wake Yuffie. The boots were the only thing she hadn’t managed to clean yesterday and, somewhat spitefully, she rubs them together over the hotel carpet to get the worst of it scrubbed away. The floors here don’t look particularly clean anyway.

It’s quiet in the lobby but outside of the hotel there’s scattered groups of people out for the night. To the credit of the people running this place, the rooms at least are soundproofed effectively enough to keep the raucous noise of casino-goers out. A quick skim of the crowds reveals no sign of Aerith and Tifa thinks, again, to go back to bed.

With a little huff of a sigh, she scrapes her boots off one last time on the wooden steps leading into the hotel, and heads into the Gold Saucer proper.

—

It’s chaotic here, but she’s anticipated this.

She’s used to crowds and chaos, used to it in ways most of the people here probably aren’t. The slums of Sector 6 weren’t too terribly different, with the Wall Market always packed shoulder-to-shoulder with kiosks and people and the sounds and smells that came along with them. The Gold Saucer at least is relatively clean and the strongest smell here is the sharp crack of alcohol wafting off of nearly every passing person.

In the terminal section it’s just as busy, and that’s where Tifa realizes she’s no idea where to start looking.

She thinks it would have been rational, maybe, to have stopped at the hotel bar and just _waited_ for Aerith to come back. That would have been the smart, logical thing to do, and on top of that she would have been able to have a drink to soothe her frayed nerves.

The thing is, she hadn’t realized that she was nervous at all until she found herself standing in the terminal.

She really isn’t sure what she’s doing here, when she thinks about it. Aerith can take care of herself and if she wants to go for a midnight walk in an obnoxious casino then that’s her business.

Tifa has no idea what she’s doing here.

She resigns herself to heading back to the hotel, crossing her arms around her middle in an undeniably protective way. She feels sort of raw, sort of itchy in some inscrutable way. Like she’s on the verge of something that she doesn’t quite understand and it’s all terribly frustrating.

Her hands curl tight around her upper arms, tight enough to dig blunt nails into her skin until she’s sure she’s leaving crescent marks. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She doesn’t—

A hand presses to the small of her back. Just this gentle touch but it takes everything she’s got to reign herself in and stop herself from swinging around to kick whoever’s touched her across the room.

And when she turns, oh, she’s glad she didn’t.

Aerith smiles at her, blithe and sweet and open like she always is, as if she can’t see exactly how tightly Tifa’s jaw is clenched. As if she can’t see the pale spots on her arms where her fingers had been digging in so hard.

“Hello,” Aerith says, like everything is completely normal and unremarkable. “What are you doing out here?”

Tifa frowns at her. It’s too much effort to keep her face impassive anymore. “You weren’t in the room,” she says. It comes out just a little too sharp, too harsh.

Aerith doesn’t frown back. She keeps on smiling, catches Tifa around the upper arm in one delicate hand and rubs her thumb across the crescent-shaped nail marks in her skin.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says easily. “Looks like you couldn’t, either.”

Tifa opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. Anything she has to say now is going to come out either too snappish or too _raw,_ and she doesn’t want either of those things right now.

“What are _you_ doing out here?” she asks instead, after she’s had a moment to gather herself. Aerith’s hand stays around her arm but it’s drifting downward until it’s wrapped around her wrist. Fingertips pressed into the soft, vulnerable bit of her where she knows her pulse is still thudding too-fast, too-wild.

“Exploring,” Aerith tells her, like that explains everything. “Want to join?”

And Tifa finds that she can’t find any excuse _not_ to join. And, curiously, she finds she actually kind of wants to.

—

Aerith’s hand is very warm and very soft where she’s wound their fingers together.

Tifa doesn’t know when they went from Aerith leading her around by the wrist to holding hands. Everything has become a blur of people and lights and Aerith’s palm pressed against hers, and as they stumble through the Gold Saucer Tifa doesn’t try to let go.

She doesn’t know why. She wonders if maybe Aerith is casting another spell on her, with the way she’s gone all soft and calm even passing through crowds of shouting people.

They end up bursting into what seems to be a theatre just as some sort of performance is about to start.

“Lucky you,” calls the man at the door, “you’re our hundredth couple!”

“We’re not-,” Tifa tries.

“Wow!” Aerith says before she can finish. “Lucky us!”

It could go worse, all things considered. They’re dragged up on stage and with anyone else Tifa thinks she would have turned tail and ran. But Aerith is smiling — beaming, really — and it makes it nearly impossible to turn her down.

The play is a simple one. A legendary hero, destined to save a beautiful princess from a dragon with true love’s kiss. Tifa is cast as the hero, and Aerith, of course, is the princess.

Tifa, for her part, can’t help but shake a little when she goes too-hard to one knee and brushes a kiss across Aerith’s knuckles to break the fabled curse. Aerith’s smile never falters but it shifts to something else as she looks down at Tifa on the floor. Something softer but no less joyful.

“Your knee is bleeding,” Aerith murmurs once they’ve been herded backstage to be congratulated on a job well done.

Tifa glances down. She hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt any pain at all but she can feel the sting when she looks and sees her knee scraped raw from the floorboards of the stage.

Aerith says, “Here,” and before Tifa can react at all, Aerith is reaching down to wrap delicate fingers around the back of her knee and casting one of those achingly warm cure spells.

Tifa shakes with it. It’s almost embarrassing how affected she is, how she sways on her feet while Aerith kneels in front of her and works her soothing magic into Tifa’s torn skin and mends it in seconds like it’d never been broken at all.

The breath that pushes out of her is long and sharp and it feels like it takes most of the tension out of her body with it. Aerith beams up at her and when she’s straightened up, this time, Tifa is the one to take her hand first.

Aerith says, “Let’s ride the gondola,” and she tugs Tifa in to walk shoulder-to-shoulder as they make their way back through the crowds.

Tifa doesn’t answer except for a nod and an infinitesimal tightening of her hand around Aerith’s.

Somehow they’re the only ones there when they get to the ticket booth. Somehow Aerith’s grinning face gets their tickets to ride for free and once they’ve settled into the gondola it’s strangely quiet, a sharp contrast to the rush of adrenaline and noise that is the Gold Saucer proper.

Aerith stares out the windows as they pass through and around the hulking structure of the Saucer. Her eyes are wide and sparkling and that smile is still pulling at her lips. Tifa can’t seem to look away from Aerith at all.

“Oh, look,” Aerith breathes, and it’s so soft and quiet that Tifa wouldn’t have heard her if she hadn’t have been staring quite so closely at her face.

She looks, though, just in time to see the first few sparks of fireworks in the sky. It’s stunning, really, nothing at all like the tiny displays at home in Nibelheim. Nothing like the firecrackers in the slums of Midgar, more loud than bright.

And she can’t help it when she looks back at Aerith. She can’t help but watch the way bursts of colour reflect in the green of her eyes and light up her face in red and pink, purple and blue.

And she can’t help it when she says, “Beautiful,” without ever looking away from Aerith.

And she can’t help but keep looking when Aerith looks back.

“Very,” Aerith responds. Her eyes are soft, focused very much on Tifa as she says it.

Tifa reaches for her hand. Aerith lets her take it.

—

The walk back to the hotel is comparatively quiet. The crowds haven’t cleared out yet, but it seems somehow easier to navigate them with Aerith’s hand clasped in hers, with the calm that hangs between them. It’s no longer a tension that Tifa is feeling — no longer a heaviness in the air around them but an easy silence that neither of them feel the need to break.

The hotel is nearly empty when they arrive. Just the man at the desk, dozing off on his paperback, and a drunk couple huddled and whispering on a couch in the corner.

“Thank you for coming with me tonight,” Aerith murmurs as they climb the stairs to their rooms. “It was much more fun with company.”

“Thank you for… having me,” Tifa says, then giggles. “I had a lot of fun too.”

It’s not a lie. It’s a truth that she didn’t expect to be so easy to admit. And Aerith smiles at her so brightly that she can’t regret admitting it even a little. Even as they reach their room door and Tifa goes to open it she’s smiling, they’re both smiling, and—

“Wait-,”

Aerith tugs sharply at her hand and Tifa turns, still smiling, still caught up in the dizzy warmth and contentedness that’s been hot on her heels since they left the Saucer proper, and then—

Oh.

_Oh._

Aerith’s lips are pressed to hers, impossibly soft and warm even as her hand squeezes Tifa’s ever tighter. The first sign of tension Aerith has shown all night reflected in the way her fingers tighten convulsively, in the way her nails dig just a little into the back of Tifa’s hand.

When Aerith breaks away Tifa opens her eyes slowly. A cliche, but she doesn’t remember having closed them.

“I wanted to do that all night,” Aerith admits breathlessly. She’s pink in the cheeks, eyes half-lidded. Her hand is still clamped firmly around Tifa’s.

Tifa exhales. She’s shaking a little, and she realizes she’s holding Aerith’s hand almost as tight as hers is being held.

“I wanted to, too,” she croaks.

Aerith laughs, that bright sound, like bells or birds or sunshine, and then she leads the way into their hotel room.

They don’t crawl into bed together, as much as Tifa wants to, but into their own beds at opposite ends of the room with Yuffie’s wall of snuffling snores between them. And Tifa finds she’s still smiling, lips tingling with the memory of Aerith’s pressed against them. Fingers still warm from Aerith’s hand wrapped around them.

She feels totally calm and at ease for the first time since Midgar. Since before she’d ever come to Midgar, even.

“Good night,” Aerith stage-whispers from across the room. Yuffie snorts in her sleep and Tifa presses her face into her pillow to stifle a laugh.

“Night,” she calls back.

“G’night,” Yuffie slurs between them.

And she can’t stifle the giggle that sneaks out this time, but she hears Aerith echo it across the room.


End file.
